Overhaul Is Proposed for Decades-Old Rules Governing City's Jails

By ALAN FEUER

Published: September 15, 2006

The New York City Board of Correction, which oversees the city's jails, is working on a plan to revise the standards that govern jails and detention centers, for the first time in almost 30 years.

At a public meeting yesterday, the nine-member board voted to approve a draft plan to revise what are known as the ''Minimum Standards for Correctional Facilities,'' which were last changed in 1978. The standards cover everything from how thousands of city inmates are housed to what they wear to how their mail is delivered.

Although the meeting was open to the public, the board did not publicly discuss any specific revisions it is considering, nor did it officially release a copy of the draft plan.

Nonetheless, participants in the meeting said that some of the most substantive -- and controversial -- proposals that the board was looking into included a decrease in the average square footage allotted to each inmate in city jails, a new policy that would allow the authorities to record inmates' phone calls and a requirement that all city inmates wear standardized uniforms.

These three proposals, if adopted, would bring New York City's jails into line with current standards set by the state, said Martin F. Horn, the city's commissioner of correction. Mr. Horn said 25 or 30 suggestions were made by the department to the board, which expects to hold hearings on its draft plan by the end of this year or early next year.

Of all the proposed revisions, the suggested decrease to 50 square feet per inmate, from 60 square feet, is perhaps the most important, because it would directly affect the number of inmates who can be housed in the modular dormitories at Rikers Island, the city's largest jail complex.

Currently, one correction officer is responsible for overseeing 100 inmates in a dormitory; if the square footage per inmate were decreased, there could be as many as 120 inmates under the eyes of one officer.

Mr. Horn said the proposal was essentially a cost-cutting measure, which department officials have said could be implemented without compromising security. Given that state prisons already use the 50-square-foot standard, Mr. Horn said anything more was a ''hidden tax'' on city taxpayers.

He also said the city wanted the power to record inmates' phone calls -- a power that state and federal prison authorities already have -- as a security precaution. Mr. Horn said that he wanted all city inmates to wear standardized jumpsuit uniforms to improve security in the jails and in travel to and from them. Currently, inmates who are awaiting trial in city jails can wear civilian clothes.

Since these were the first major proposals to revise the standards in almost three decades, the board's tiny conference room on Chambers Street was packed with correction officials, lawyers and advocates for inmates. The meeting was briefly interrupted by a group of protesters who confronted Mr. Horn about the department's plan to build a new jail in the Bronx.

Mr. Horn said that a handful of new members appointed to the board by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg were behind the plan to revise the standards. The city's Law Department is expected to review the proposals before they are subjected to public comment.

Some of those at the meeting said they were disappointed that the board did not flesh out more fully the revisions it plans to make. One of them, Jonathan Chasan, a lawyer for the Legal Aid Society's prisoners' rights project, said he had come to the meeting hoping to learn which revisions were actually under consideration.

''We're extremely concerned with the subject matter,'' Mr. Chasan said, ''and look forward to an opportunity to see what it is they voted on.''